


hits so hard i can hardly breathe

by bookishgypsy



Category: Dynasty (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, falliamfrenzy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:27:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23015494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookishgypsy/pseuds/bookishgypsy
Summary: "His eyes are blank, staring ahead in front of him at absolute nothingness; she decides she hates it right away, willing to do anything in her power to make him at least smile and feel anything but worry." Post 3x14. // #falliamfrenzy week one.
Relationships: Fallon Carrington/Liam Ridley
Comments: 4
Kudos: 52





	hits so hard i can hardly breathe

He’d already changed into a pair of pajama pants when she steps out of the ensuite, face barren of any makeup and wearing her own pair of matching pajamas, where she finds him already bundled up under the covers of the hotel room bed. 

She kind of hates herself for not seeing how stressed he was this whole time, for not seeing the panic in his eyes the moment his son showed up unannounced; but she was focused on herself and her own fears of losing Liam all the same, so she was blinded to the truth that was sitting right in front of her the whole time. 

His eyes are blank, staring ahead in front of him at absolute nothingness; she decides she hates it right away, willing to do anything in her power to make him at least smile and feel anything but worry. She climbs into the spot beside him, leaning against her hand perched up by her elbow, reaching out with her free hand to grab at one of his resting against the mattress. 

“Hey,” she says softly. “You doing okay?”

“I don’t know, Fal,” he sighs. She brings his hand up to kiss the palm of his hand, before tangling their fingers back together loosely. “This is just a lot to take in.”

“I know it is.” Her thumb strokes against his hand in small, comforting circles. “But, you don’t have to do this alone, remember? I’m in this with you completely.”

“I know, and I appreciate it,” he squeezes his hand a little tighter against her grip, smiling at her with those eyes that swelled with so much love and adoration for her. His head falls against his pillow, his free hand running a hand against his forehead and through his soft hair, an action she immediately recognized as a sign of stress. “I feel like such a hypocrite.” 

Her brows crease together in confusion at his words. “What do you mean?”

“Telling you just over a week ago that I didn’t want to have kids,” he says, looking over at her. “And in comes rolling my eighteen year old selves mistake.”

“You know I don’t see it that way, Liam.”

She applies more pressure to their hands, tightening her grip against his, hoping the action would calm him. She hates seeing him like this, in distress and worried over something he ultimately had no control over, something he realistically couldn’t change. 

“What if I can’t do this, Fal?”

“Do what, babe?”

“Be a _parent,_ ” he starts, looking at her with wide eyes. “It’s not exactly like I’ve had the best role model on how to do this _right_.”

“Well, you know what _not_ to do, Liam,” her hand slips from his to rub against his upper arm, hoping the action would calm the rushing thoughts she just _knows_ he’s having. “You know everything your mom’s done to you that you wouldn’t want anyone else to feel or go through."

“I don’t even _know_ him. I…I don’t know what he likes or…or what he doesn’t like,” he sighs. “I don’t know if he has any medical conditions I need to know about. I don’t know if he’s allergic to anything.”

She focus on their linked hands, rubbing small little circles at the base of his thumb. She settles herself down against his side, leaning her forehead against the side of his face, hoping the close proximity will bring him some ease, some comfort; anything to take away all these worries and fears circling inside him. But when she pushes her weight up against her hand once more and looks back down at him, he’s turned at least five shades paler and she panics at the loss of color in his face, in his eyes,

“Liam?” She’s never seen him this distressed, in this much doubt of himself. He was usually the one comforting _her_ , telling her everything would be okay. She’s not used to him feeling the way she’s usually feeling everyday. Although she’d damn do anything in her power to help him through it, she wasn’t letting him suffer alone. “Hey, Liam. Look at me. What’s wrong?”

“I feel like I can’t breathe.”

“Hey, hey,” she hums quietly, sitting up straight against the headboard. She pulls him against her chest, running her fingers through his short hair in an attempt to calm the anxieties obviously building inside him; she could recognize those signs far to well, having dealt with her fair share of panic attacks growing up. “It’s okay.”

She’d do anything to take away this feeling from him. 

“Breath with me okay?” It only take four reps for his breathing to even out, Liam always being in far better control of his emotions than she was. But she still doesn’t like it, seeing him this way. He didn’t deserve to have this bombshell dropped on him like that; to think your ten year old child was adopted by a loving family living a life neither he nor Heidi were apart of, only to find out the mother of your child had lied to you and kept him this whole time. “You’re gonna make yourself sick if you keep thinking of everything that could go wrong.”

The only thing she can do is hold him close to her body and hope the warmth of her skin calms him as she helps him breathe in and out, just like he’s helped her do countless times before, to lower his racing heart and gasping breaths. His fingers clutch lightly against the fabric of her pajama top, cheek resting against the skin exposed from the few buttons of her top that weren’t fastened together.

“It just sounds so awful, because you should love your child, right?” Liam rubs his cheek against the skin of her décolletage, pushing himself further against her body. “I just…I don’t feel like I _do._ I don’t even know him, Fal.”

“I know, Liam, I know.” She’s pretty sure she feels her heart break when she hears him admit out loud to her that he doesn’t love this child, but she can’t fault him for it; he’s only known the kid for less than forty-eight hours. He didn’t even know the child was still with his birth mother until forty-eight hours ago. “But you’ll get to know him and maybe you’ll be able to love him in time.”

He moves away from her reluctantly, holding tight to her hand still, leaning back against his pillow so he can look up at her. “I don’t feel like you should have to _learn_ to love your own kid.”

“Well,” she drops their tangled hands to cup the side of his face and turn his head in her direction. “You weren’t exactly given a choice to love him from the start of it all, though.”

“It just makes me worry if we were ever to start a family together…” his voice trails off and she looks his way, his eyes finding hers before he continues. “Would I feel the same way about our child?”

“Liam.”

“I just don’t want to bring a child into the world if I’m not capable of loving them, you know?”

“Liam,” her hand finds his face again, circling her thumb around his cheek in small patterns. “Hey, you’re getting yourself all worked up here.”

“l don’t want to feel that way about a child if this….,” he trails off, losing volume with each word he speaks; his hand comes up to grip at the one she’s resting against his face. “This _child_ was half of me and half of you.”

She immediately shuts it down with a shake of her head. “You wouldn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know you,” she says simply, as if there isn’t even a need for any further explanation on the matter, but she continues nonetheless. “You are so incredibly compassionate and loving and you put everything you have into something you go after. Not to mention, you put everyones needs before your own.”

She grips at one of his fingers and he holds on tightly, but he seems to just be soaking in what she said, staring ahead at their closed bedroom door without looking in her direction at all. He wraps one of his own digits around the finger she’s gripped on to, tightening their hold on one another, before he finally looks over in her direction. She hates the sadness she can see in his eyes, the way he’s trying to be strong for Connor’s sake, but she knows him better than that. 

And right now, he’s _terrified_ for this unknown future they now faced together. 

“If we were to start a family, you’d know our child from the very beginning. They wouldn’t already be their own little person, with their own identity. Off somewhere living with their mother while you don’t even know he wasn’t adopted into a new family. You’d be there from the start, Liam."

She feels his grip loosen a little bit against her fingers. “I don't know, Fal.”

“I do,” she grasps onto the hand of his trying to pull away, refusing to let him slither away from her like that. “God, I just want to strangle your mother for doing this to you, making you doubt yourself like this. You’d be the best dad in the whole world. You have so much love to give, Liam.”

His eyes widen a little bit when he looks over at her, muttering a soft, “You think so?”

“I _know_ so. Because you give me that love every single day.” Liam sits himself up and rests his back against the hotel beds headboard, pulling her into his chest, her head settling gently against his upper arm. “Love I didn’t even think I was deserving of until you came and proved me all wrong.”

“You know,” he says, his arm wrapped around her rom behind, hand rubbing up and down her bare arm filling her with this warm, tingly sensation only he could manage to make her feel. “You’d be the best mom, too.”

She laughs against him. “Well, I don’t know about that. I mean, I gave you son a bottle of champagne to play with tonight. That doesn’t exactly scream ‘mother of the year.’”

“Yeah, but your parents didn’t make things easy for you,” he says. She sinks herself just a little further into his embrace. “Sometimes I think they may have been worse than my mom. You’d do anything to make sure your son or daughter didn’t have to feel what you felt growing up. Or go through what you went through with your parents.”

“We don’t even need to worry about this right now. We don’t even know if we’re going to _have_ kids one day,” her hand winds over across his chest, tired eyes starting to win out in this late hour of the night. “And even if we were, we are so not even close to ready for them right now.”

She breaths out a silent breath of relief when she hears him laugh lightly in the dimly lit room. “You say that as a ten year old was literally just dropped off at our door and is now our responsibility.”

“Yeah, I was trying to forget that part.”

“I just still don’t know what to do about Connor,” he says softly, fingers twirling around at the end of her strands of hair falling against her back. “He doesn’t deserve his mom abandoning him like this. And he doesn’t deserve getting thrown into the midst of our crazy lives, either. Especially when he doesn’t even know us.”

“No, he doesn’t,” she agrees. “But, we’re gonna figure it out.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She feels her tired eyes starting to flutter shut, so she reaches over to turn the lamp off on her side of the bed, before falling against his warmth again. “We’ll figure out what’s best for him _and_ what’s best for us and everything will work out.”

“Look at you,” he says and she can hear the smirk in his voice. “Being the voice of reason. Being the positive one.”

“What can I say? You inspire me.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, but I’m also freaking out on the inside,” she admits quietly as he pulls her in further to his arms. “I just know you don’t need me to do that right now, so I’m hiding it _really_ well.”

“I don’t know if you’re hiding it that well if you tell me?”

She leans over to him, finding his lips in the dark, lips pressing together in a soft, lingering kiss. She settles against his side again, his arm resting against her back, tracing random patterns on the exposed skin behind her. 

“How about we get some sleep for now? We’ll reassess everything in the morning and go from there.”

“Okay,” he whispers. “Tomorrow’s a new day?”

“Tomorrow’s a new day.”


End file.
